Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Re: Online book for usability

[David Allouche]

On Thu, Jun 24, 2004 at 12:08:00PM -0700, Tom Lord wrote:
> 
>     > From: David Allouche <address@hidden>
> 
>     > Essentially, that paper says: "You may know, as an uber-geek, that your
>     > tool is right and that new users get it wrong because the expect the
>     > wrong thing. Still, what matters is your users, so you'd better consider
>     > seriously whether doing the wrong thing user expects would not actually
>     > be the right thing." But it says so is much more numerous words in order
>     > to be convincing.
> 
> Ick.  It's a confused sentiment.

What is confused is my poor attempt at trying to summarize a long essay
(but very short "book") into a single sentence. If I thought that essay
could be usefully summarized in a single sentence, I would not have said
it is worth reading.

> [hammer-based rebuttal]

James Blackwell did a good job at explaining why you are missing the
point.  He is doing much better a job than me at conveying how and why
this essay is worth reading.

It is _maybe_ reasonable to send people who have _chosen_ to use Arch
back to the documentation, or spend time explaining them what they are
doing wrong (and ask them to contribute back documentation). However a
significant, and hopefully ever-growing, part of the user-base is going
to be people who have to use Arch because the organization they work in
made this choice for them.

It is unreasonable, and frustrating to everyone, to ask those people to
supply the same amount of learning effort as people who have willfully
chosen Arch. And if they get frustrated, they are likely to be much more
vocal than we would like them to be.

Oh, and please read the two previous paragraphs only as an addendum to
James' answer.


>     > That is the reason why untagged-source files are now "precious" instead
>     > of "unrecognized". We may know that it is better to have
>     > "untagged-source unrecognized" because it catches mistakes, but many
>     > users just expect "untagged-source precious".
> 
> That particular change to "precious" rather than "unrecognized" was
> probably a mistake.  It's a fix to a symptom, not the cause of the UI
> disconnect.  It's a bogus fix because it encourages misuse of the
> tool.  Since that change, I have sometimes found myself with revisions
> that are messed up because of that change.  I've gotten in the habit
> of remembering to change what `untagged-source' maps to in
> =tagging-method whenever I start a new tree: that's a habit that's
> born of compensating for the fact that the UI (after the change you
> mention) encourages a dangerous usage pattern.
> 
> A better fix would revert that change, then try harder to understand
> what is confusing about the resulting error messages for users, and
> fix that.

More on the screwhammer front.

Many people are used to do things in ways we know are unsafe and wrong.
But they will consistently be frustrated if a tool keeps on thinking
he is smarter than them and preventing them from working as they are
used to.

[snipped rationale that the unsafety is minor]
[snipped faulty finger-guard analogy]

Did I already mention you should read James' message because he's so
much better than I at keeping the discussion to the point? :-)


>     > Next time you have to explain something to a user who has read some
>     > simple documentation, and that explanation has to be longer than one
>     > phrase, or next time you have to answer a user something along the lines
>     > of "you are doing the wrong thing", ask yourself whether burdening the
>     > user with all that irrelevant (to the task at hand) information is worth
>     > the trouble.
> 
> Often it will be, in the case of Arch.
> 
> Part of what's going on with newbies is that when they use CVS or
> other systems, they often use them as "black boxes" and with very poor
> sense either of what's going on, or of what the tool is capable of.
> 
> Arch is doing much _better_ than CVS in that it at least leads users
> to _try_ to use scm-features they hadn't thought of before --- in some
> cases, the UI doesn't lead some users far enough.

To some extent that's a good thing. I like tools which gently push me
to learn more and broaden my perspective.

But to some extent it is also a bad thing. To quote Robin Farine, with
whom I often disagree, but who is remarkably good at playing the bastard
user from hell.

Robin Farine said:
> Sometimes we forgot we even had to learn to drink, to walk, to use
> CVS,. We want tools that think and do the right thing, whatever the
> heck it might be. Just push the big red button there and the tool
> takes care of the rest. Error messages? They tell me that something
> went wrong, bad, the tool could not do its job, I am lost.  
[...]
> In fact, it is just a matter of personal taste. Some prefer
> simplicity, some prefer correctness and some prefer beer.

First and foremost, people want their work done. Arch users are in
particular class which also make them likely to be interested in being
educated.  But Arch should not try to force that education down their
throats.

I think I already said that jblack's post... okay.. okay...

-- 
                                                            -- ddaa